"The Pied Piper" by artist Maxfield Parrish had been displayed for many years in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco until it was removed and shipped to an auction house on Friday, March 22, 2013.

Photo: Courtesy Of The Palace Hotel

"The Pied Piper" by artist Maxfield Parrish had been displayed for...

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The wall behind the bar of the Pied Piper Bar and Grill is bare inside the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on Friday, March 22, 2013, where Maxfield Parrish's painting was displayed for many years. It was removed this morning and will be sold at auction.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

The wall behind the bar of the Pied Piper Bar and Grill is bare...

Image 3 of 4

"The Pied Piper" by artist Maxfield Parrish had been displayed for many years in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, Calif., until it was removed and shipped to an auction house on Friday, March 22, 2013.

Photo: Maxfield Parrish

"The Pied Piper" by artist Maxfield Parrish had been displayed for...

Image 4 of 4

In a photograph taken in about 1935, "The Pied Piper" by artist Maxfield Parrish is seen in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, Calif.

(03-22) 15:50 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The owners of San Francisco's Palace Hotel have removed the famous Maxfield Parish Pied Piper painting that has graced the hotel's main bar for over a century and plans to sell it at auction.

The mural was removed Friday morning and will be sold as the centerpiece of the Christie auction house's spring sale of important American paintings on May 23.

The painting, which measures 16 feet long by six feet deep, is considered a major San Francisco cultural treasure and is a major feature of the Pied Piper room, selected as one of the city's "legacy bars and restaurants" by the San Francisco Architectural Heritage. The hotel said the painting was being sold because "it is no longer practical for the hotel to display, an original work of this value and cultural signifcance, in a public area."

The hotel estimates the value of the painting to be between $3 million and $5 million.

It was painted by Parish, one of the most noted American painters of the 20th century, in 1909 especially for the Palace Hotel, which reopened that year. The original Palace Hotel was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.